The Bishop of Cottontown Part 14

Richard Travis had an intuition of things as naturally as an eagle has the homing instinct, however high in air and beyond all earth's boundaries he flies. In this instance Mrs. Westmore also had it, for she looked up quickly at the man beside her. All the other emotions had vanished from his face save the one appealing look which said: "Come, let us go--we have heard enough."

Then they slipped back into the house.

Alice Westmore had stopped, smiling back from the doorway.

"On what, Bishop?" she finally asked.

He shook his head. "Jus' the dream of an ole man," he said. "Don't bother about us two ole men. I'll be 'long presently."

"Bisco," said the old preacher after a while, "come mighty nigh makin' a break then--but I've been thinkin' of Cap'n Tom all day. I can't throw it off."

Bisco shook his head solemnly. "So have I--so have I. The older I gits, the mo' I miss Ma.r.s.e Tom."

"I don't like the way things are goin'--in yonder"--and the preacher nodded his head toward the house.

Uncle Bisco looked cautiously around to see that no one was near: "He's doin' his bes'--the only thing is whether she can forgit Ma.r.s.e Tom."

"Bisco, it ain't human nature for her to stan' up agin all that's brought to bear on her. Cap'n Tom is dead. Love is only human at las', an' like all else that's human it mus' fade away if it ain't fed. It's been ten years an' mo'--sence--Cap'n Tom's light went out."

"The last day of November--'64--" said Uncle Bisco, "I was thar an'

seed it. It was at the Franklin fight."

"An' d.i.c.k Travis has loved her from his youth," went on the overseer, "an' he loves her now, an' he's a masterful man."

"So is the Devil," whispered Uncle Bisco, "an' didn't he battle with the angels of the Lord an' mighty nigh hurled 'em from the crystal battlements."

"Bisco, I know him--I've knowed him from youth. He's a conjurin'

man--a man who does things--he'll win her--he'll marry her yet.

She'll not love him as she did Cap'n Tom. No--she'll never love again. But life is one thing an' love is another, an' it ain't often they meet in the same person. Youth mus' live even if it don't love, an' the law of nature is the law of life."

"I'm afeered so," said the old negro, shaking his head, "I'm afeered it'll be that way--but--I'd ruther see her die to-night."

"If G.o.d lets it be," said the preacher, "Bisco, if G.o.d lets it be--"

he said excitedly, "if he'll let Cap'n Tom die an' suffer the martyrdom he suffered for conscience sake an' be robbed, as he was robbed, of his home, an' of his love--if G.o.d'll do that, then all I can say is, that after a long life walkin' with G.o.d, it'll be the fus' time I've ever knowed Him to let the wrong win out in the end.

An' that ain't the kind of G.o.d I'm lookin' fur."

"Do you say that, Ma.r.s.e Hillyard?" asked the old negro quickly--his eyes taking on the light of hope as one who, weak, comes under the influence of a stronger mind. "Ma.r.s.e Hillyard, do you believe it?

Praise G.o.d."

"Bisco--I'm--I'm ashamed--why should I doubt Him--He's told me a thousand truths an' never a lie."

"Praise G.o.d," replied the old man softly.

And so the two old men talked on, and their talk was of Captain Tom.

No wonder when the old preacher mounted his horse to go back to his little cabin, all of his thoughts were of Captain Tom. No wonder Uncle Bisco, who had raised him, went to bed and dreamed of Captain Tom--dreamed and saw again the b.l.o.o.d.y Franklin fight.

CHAPTER IX

A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING

In the library, Travis and Mrs. Westmore sat for some time in silence. Travis, as usual, smoked, in his thoughtful way watching the firelight which flickered now and then, half lighting up the room. It was plain that both were thinking of a subject that neither wished to be the first to bring up.

"I have been wanting all day to ask you about the mortgage," she said to him, finally.

"Oh," said Travis, indifferently enough--"that's all right. I arranged it at the bank to-day."

"I am so much obliged to you; it has been so on my mind," said his companion. "We women are such poor financiers, I wonder how you men ever have patience to bother with us. Did you get Mr. s.h.i.+pton to carry it at the bank for another year?"

"Why--I--you see, Cousin Alethea--s.h.i.+pton's a close dog--and the most unaccommodating fellow that ever lived when it comes to money. And so--er--well--the truth is--is--I had to act quickly and for what I thought was your interest."

Mrs. Westmore looked up quickly, and Travis saw the pained look in her face. "So I bought it in myself," he went on, carelessly flecking his cigar ashes into the fire. "I just had the judgment and sale transferred to me--to accommodate you--Cousin Alethea--you understand that--entirely for you. I hate to see you bothered this way--I'll carry it as long as you wish."

She thanked him again, more with her eyes than her voice. Then there crept over her face that look of trouble and sorrow, unlike any Travis had ever seen there. Once seen on any human face it is always remembered, for it is the same, the world over, upon its millions and millions--that deadened look of trouble which carries with it the knowledge that the spot called home is lost forever.

There are many s.h.i.+fting photographs from the camera called sorrow, pictured on the delicate plate of the human soul or focused in the face. There is the crushed look when Death takes the loved one, the hardened look when an ideal is shattered, the look of dismay from wrecked hopes and the cynical look from wrecked happiness--but none of these is the numbed and dumb look of despair which confronts humanity when the home is gone.

It runs not alone through the man family, but every other animal as well, from the broken-hearted bird which sits on the nearby limb, and sees the wreck of her home by the ravages of a night-prowling marauder, to the squalidest of human beings, turning their backs forever on the mud-hut that had once sheltered them.

To Mrs. Westmore it was a keen grief. Here had she come as a bride--here had she lived since--here had been born her two children--here occurred the great sorrow of her life.

And the sacredest memory, at last, of life, lies not in the handclasp of a coming joy, but in the footfall of a vanis.h.i.+ng sorrow.

Westmoreland meant everything to Mrs. Westmore--the pride of birth, of social standing, the ties of motherhood, the very altar of her life. And it was her husband's name and her own family. It meant she was not of common clay, nor unknown, nor without influence. It was bound around and woven into her life, and part of her very existence.

Home in the South means more than it does anywhere else on earth; for local self-government--wherever the principle came from--finds its very altar there. States-right is nothing but the home idea, stretched over the state and bounded by certain lines. The peculiar inst.i.tutions of the South made every home a castle, a town, a government, a kingdom in itself, in which the real ruler is a queen.

Ask the first negro or child met in the road, whose home is this, or that, and one would think the entire Southland was widowed.

From the day she had entered it as a bride, Westmoreland, throughout the County, had been known as the home of Mrs. Westmore.

She was proud of it. She loved it with that love which had come down through a long line of cavaliers loving their castles.

And now she knew it must go, as well as that, sooner or later, Death itself must come.

She knew Richard Travis, and she knew that, if from his life were s.n.a.t.c.hed the chance of making Alice Westmore his wife he would sell the place as cold-bloodedly as s.h.i.+pton would.

Travis sat smoking, but reading her. He spelled her thoughts as easily as if they had been written on her forehead, for he was a man who spelled. He smoked calmly and indifferently, but the one question of his heart--the winning of Alice,--surged in his breast and it said: "Now is the time--now--buy her--the mother. This is the one thing which is her price."

He looked at Mrs. Westmore again. He scanned her closely, from her foot to the dainty head of beautiful, half-grey hair. He could read her as an open book--her veneration of all Westmoreland things--her vanity--her pride of home and name and position; the overpowering independence of that vanity which made her hold up her head in company, just as in the former days, tho' to do it she must work, scrub, pinch, ay, even go hungry.

He knew it all and he knew it better than she guessed--that it had actually come to a question of food with them; that her son was a geological dreamer, just out of college, and that Alice's meagre salary at the run-down female college where she taught music was all that stood between them and poverty of the bitterest kind.

For there is no poverty like the tyranny of that which sits on the erstwhile throne of plenty.

He glanced around the room--the hall--the home--in his mind's eye--and wondered how she did it--how she managed that poverty should leave no trace of itself in the home, the well furnished and elegant old home, from its s.h.i.+ning, polished furniture and old silver to the oiled floor of oak and ash.